John West Foods started life in 1868 when John West, an entrepreneurial Scottish migrant from Linlithgow moved to Oregon USA, and set up a salmon cannery. In 1892, John West sold his business and went gold prospecting in California.

Regardless of the size of your business, the nature of the goods it supplies or the services it provides, your business will create and as a consequence, it will own some forms of Intellectual Property (IP).
We know that when dealing with IP issues, the two main barriers micro, small and medium sized enterprises face are a lack of time, and the financial cost.

ip4all was established to help. It provides:-

a source of practical, relevant and accessible information; and

credible, reliable, and affordable IP advice and assistance

tailored to the particular needs of micro, small and medium sized enterprises.

“A person ought to keep a secret if he has said that he will do so” (Anon.)

“The intellectual property situation is bad and getting worse. To be a programmer, it requires that you understand as much law as you do technology” (Eric Allman)

“Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet” (Mark Twain 1902)

“The patent system added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius” (Abraham Lincoln 11 February 1859)

“Trade Marks – the Fingerprints of Commerce” (Anon)

“Examples of selling of ideas are portrayed in consulting or paid advice, as the pricing of intellectual property is market driven” (Chuck Martin)

“To ignore this blatant misappropriation of our intellectual property is akin to taking these assets that we've invested in and saying they don't matter.” (Brian Bogosian)

“If this business were split up, I would give you the land and bricks and mortar, and I would take the brands and trade marks, and I would fare better than you.”(John Stuart, Chairman of Quaker (ca. 1900))

“Better a man have anything happen to him except all his children die of the influenza than that he be involved in a patent action” (Lord Esher in Ungar v. Sugg [1892] 2 RPC 113)

“A patent, or invention, is any assemblage of technologies or ideas that you can put together that nobody put together that way before. That's how the US patent office defines it. That's an invention.” (Dean Kamen)

“Everything that can be invented has been invented.” (Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Patent Office, 1899)

“There is no doubt that if this country wants to maintain their position in the world markets ‘branded goods’ is the only method as a hall-mark of quality. The private trade-mark is the keystone in modern commerce.”(Advertiser’s Weekly, 29 August 1918)

Congress must have the power “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” (US Constitution 1787)

“Except, perhaps, cases of warranty of horses, there was no subject which offered so many opportunities for sharp practice as the law of patents.”(Earl of Granville House of Lords 1851)